


flight, fight

by influorescence



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/F, First Time, Hate Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rough Sex, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:27:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28027014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/influorescence/pseuds/influorescence
Summary: The Reverend Daughter pays Gideon a visit after foiling her latest escape attempt.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 20
Kudos: 111





	flight, fight

So, that was that. The shuttle was gone and her hopes and months of planning with it. With limbs like lead and a heavier heart, Gideon stumbled from the chapel all the way back to her cell to sprawl, defeated, on her lumpy, thin mattress. 

Eighty-seven. 

If she had thought, over the years, to carve a tally of her failed escapes into the bricks of her prison, she could have made it a feature wall. _What up guys, welcome to my crib, over here we got the cold, hard evidence of all my life's mistakes. Here are my shitty robes, here is my shitty bed, and here are my most prized possessions in all the nine houses, a bunch of titty mags._ She did not bother to crawl under the covers, but lay there atop the blankets, feeling the chill settle into her bones like self-pity. Her consciousness meandered and, at some point, took a detour and abandoned her completely. 

The next time she was aware, it was of the soft _click_ of someone unlocking the door to her cell. Her sluggish brain had not struggled to wakefulness before the person was inside and locking the door behind them. A bloom of panic propelled Gideon upright. The slight figure, even shrouded in layers of robes and cloak and barely limned by the feeble electric light seeping through the tiny window of the cell door, was unmistakable. 

Gideon surged forward and fisted her hands in the front of the Reverend Daughter’s robes, slamming her against the door. The hood slipped just enough to reveal Harrowhark's face, expressionless behind its painted skull. Rage and desperation bubbled up in Gideon's core. At a loss for words, she shook the diminutive Lady of the Ninth, making the door clatter in its frame. The ache of her exhausted muscles barely registered in the back of her mind. 

Harrowhark said nothing. She did not so much as twitch a muscle or bone to stop Gideon's assault. Her eyes, in the shadowy dark, were impenetrable stone. Gideon felt her face twist into some unknown expression as they stared at each other for one heartbeat, two. The fraught silence stretched out interminably between them. 

_I completely fucking hate you—no offense,_ they'd told each other. Lunge, feint, parry; match to the House of the Ninth. What was there left to say?

Gideon did not know who moved first. There was a flurry of motion and Harrow's mouth was hot on hers, their teeth clacking painfully, more an attack than a kiss. Gideon tasted blood as they bit at each other, Harrow's bony little hands coming up to fist in her hair. Gideon shoved her back against the door with a great thump, breaking the kiss only to tilt her head for a renewed assault on Harrow's mouth. 

Harrow clenched her fingers in Gideon's hair, making her eyes water, and thrust her tongue into Gideon's mouth. Gideon growled, meeting Harrow's tongue with her own, licking at her as if to make her choke on it. Harrow clawed at her scalp and bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. Gideon jerked away and Harrow took advantage of this to push her roughly towards the bed. Caught off-guard, Gideon stumbled the few steps back across the tiny cell to fall with a great rattle on the cot. 

Harrow stalked forward like a tiny wraith, layers of black fabric and lace swirling around her ankles. She dove with grasping hands for Gideon's throat, but Gideon caught her by the wrists and twisted so she hit the mattress, air punched from her lungs. Gideon rose to crouch over her, panting, gazing down at the hated face. The paint had blurred into a mess of grey at Harrow's lips, and the skin underneath was starting to show through. 

At last, Gideon asked, knowing the answer: "Were you ever planning on letting me go?" 

Harrow's smooth mask crumpled into a sneer. 

"Oh, Griddle," she said, her voice slow and deliberate. "Of course I couldn't allow you to leave." 

Something in Gideon's chest snapped into sharp-edged pieces. Numb, she allowed Harrow to pull her face to hers, press feverish kisses to her mouth. Harrow rolled Gideon onto her back, and she went without protest. Harrow started making her way down Gideon's chin and neck, and Gideon's traitorous pulse jumped at the scrape of teeth on her throat. 

With a wet sound, Harrow released the mark she had sucked into Gideon's skin and sat up. A thrill of something that was and wasn't fear ran through Gideon as Harrow undid the clasps and ties of her robes, letting them fall layer by layer to the floor behind her. She shed fabric like an exoskeleton until all that remained was a clinging shift that skimmed over all of her sharp edges and exposed the wings of her collarbones. Her arms were very white in the darkness as she reached for the neck of Gideon's robes and stopped to meet her eyes. Gideon swallowed hard and placed her hands on Harrow's, pulling the first of the ties apart. 

Harrow batted her hands away and made quick, efficient work of the fastenings of her robes, shoving them down Gideon's shoulders. Gideon struggled upright, jerking her arms free of the sleeves, and pulled Harrow's bird-boned body roughly to her. Harrow threw her arms around Gideon's neck as they kissed, her body hot and shocking against Gideon's. Her shifting weight in Gideon's lap and the press of their fronts together made Gideon's stomach do odd little flips. 

It was a strange thing, to feel the thudding of Harrow's beating heart against her chest, the slick aliveness of her lips under the death's-head paint. Harrow ran her hands through Gideon's hair and down the jumping muscles of her back, and Gideon, made bold, pressed her hands along Harrow's ribs to feel up her small breasts. Harrow gave a delicious little gasp and arched into the touch, pushing Gideon's shoulders back down to the bed and yanking at the hem of her tank top. 

With some difficulty, owing to her lapful of writhing nunlet, Gideon managed to pull her still-dangling legs up so they were fully on the tiny bed, kicking her boots off somewhere into the darkness. The seams of her shirt protested as Harrow yanked it impatiently off. The cold hit Gideon's skin and she flipped them as Harrow scrabbled at the edge of her bandeau, clawing it none-too-gently over Gideon's head. In the tumult, Harrow's slip had ridden high on her thighs, and Gideon seized it by its lacy hem and pulled it off of Harrow. Harrow flopped back down to the bed and allowed her arms to fall like an afterthought above her head, making her breasts stick out impudently. Her expression was taunting under the tousled mess of her short-cropped hair. Her chest rose and fell with the quickness of her breath. The paint on the lower half of her face had smudged into an indistinct blur of darkness, giving her the appearance of a gloating, jawless skull on the skinny, sun-deprived body of a girl. 

"Well, Nav?" The Reverend Daughter's usual haughty tone was undercut by her breathlessness. "What are you going to do about it?" 

Gideon seized Harrow's narrow wrists and pinned them with one hand above her head. She bit at Harrow's lips, and with the other hand, groped at the softness of Harrow's barely-there tits. Harrow put up a feeble pretense of struggle before opening her mouth eagerly to Gideon's tongue and wrapping her thin legs around Gideon's waist. The grind of her damp fabric-clad hips to Gideon's abdomen made the last two brain cells bouncing around Gideon's skull stutter to a halt. Her hand ceased its abuse of Harrow's nipples and traced down Harrow's torso to the waistband of her underwear. Harrow gave another shift of her hips, and let out an airy, derisive laugh when Gideon slipped her fingers under the waistband and between her wet folds. 

"Do it," breathed the huge bitch, provoking her. "Make me pay." 

Gideon's hold on her wrists tightened until she was sure it must hurt, the delicate bones creaking in her vice grip, and she rubbed mercilessly at Harrow's clit. Harrow's mouth dropped open in a soundless cry. A jolt shook her body, and her legs, splayed around Gideon, spread wider in invitation. Gideon slid her hand downward still, grinding her palm against Harrow's clit, teasing at the tight circle of her entrance with a finger. 

The air between them was humid with their harsh breathing. Harrow squirmed beneath Gideon. Her lips, parted around her gasping breaths, begged to be kissed. Instead, Gideon drove a finger slowly inside her, pushing in, out, in, until it was fully inside the clench of Harrow's body. Gideon rocked the heel of her hand against the wet spread of Harrow and started working in a second finger. Harrow was moaning continuously beneath her, spasming with each slow thrust. The slick sound of Harrow taking it, shameless about it, filled the cramped room until Gideon's ears rang with it. 

Unable to stand it, Gideon muffled Harrow's cries with her lips. Harrow gasped into her mouth, her eyes half-open and glazed, as Gideon ground her palm against her and thrust her fingers faster inside. Her hand on Harrow's wrists loosened in her concentration, and Harrow pulled her hands out of Gideon's grasp, looped her arms around Gideon's shoulders languidly, almost lovingly. She kissed Gideon back, brow furrowed, and pulled Gideon to her with arms and legs. Her thighs tightened around Gideon's hips, increasingly frantic as she met Gideon's thrusts, until at last Harrow came, shaking, under her. She writhed against the sheets, digging her nails into Gideon's back, hips stuttering against Gideon's hand. Her broken moan was quiet in the stuffy darkness, and she whimpered helplessly as she twitched through the aftershocks. 

Harrow’s eyelashes fluttered as Gideon pulled out. Gideon was suddenly aware of her soreness, arms and shoulders burning with the day's exertions, but her body thrummed with tension. Surely she'd soaked right through her trousers by now. She sat back on her heels, still in the open V of Harrow's slack legs, and looked at the limp body before her. Harrow's underwear was shoved halfway down her hips, clinging to the wetness on her thighs; they'd never bothered to take them off. Her limbs were flung out at awkward angles, and her chest rose and fell as she took steadying breaths. The air was heavy with the sickly sweet smell of her.

Harrow's movements were clumsy as she sat up and reached to fumble with the buttons of Gideon's trousers. Gideon, whose every nerve was alight with need, scrambled to lie back and lift her hips so Harrow could drag the trousers off, taking her underwear with them, and drop them unceremoniously to the floor. Then, Harrow had her hands on Gideon's bare thighs, pushing them apart and lowering her head, and Gideon was beyond any semblance of thought to stop her. Her vision swam as Harrow parted the lips with her thumbs and licked a long, deliberate stripe all the way up. She was vaguely aware that sounds were coming from her mouth; what they were, she could not have said. 

Harrow's tongue was firm and unrelenting, probing all the way to her soul. When she wrapped her lips around Gideon's clit and introduced the barest touch of teeth, Gideon sobbed. She was on fire. Her muscles throbbed with pain and desire and the sensation of being at the edge of a cliff, waiting for the fall. She was anchored to the bed, fists twisted in the sheets, Harrow's hands on her thighs and mouth working her over; she was dangling on the edge of a precipice, dizzy with vertigo, wind howling in her ears. At last, Harrow saw fit to press a thumb hard to her clit and another to the space right below her hole, thrusting her tongue up into her, and Gideon choked and plummeted to her end. She fell, and fell, 

and

fell. 

When she came to, flat on her back with a leg over Harrow's shoulder, Harrow had her head resting on her other thigh. Her face was inches from Gideon's bits, harsh breaths ghosting over Gideon's oversensitive clit as she brought herself off again. Gideon clenched and spasmed and came a little more, and she felt Harrow turn her face into Gideon's leg as she moaned her release. 

The miserable little cell was, for possibly the first time in its history, overly warm. As they lay there remembering how to breathe, the cold began to creep back in, raising goosebumps on their skin. Gideon managed to heave enough blanket out from under them to half-assedly throw a section over their bodies. Harrow had rolled off of her leg, but she hadn't gone far; the bed was too small for her not to be overlapping Gideon here and there, a hand or foot sticking out over the edge of the mattress. 

Forming words with a mouth that did not feel like her own, Gideon mumbled, "What the fuck was that?" 

The silence hung as empty as if she had not spoken. Neither of them moved. Too fought- and fucked-out to press the issue, Gideon closed her eyes. Gradually, her mind drifted away from Drearburh and its lady in her bed, into the embrace of darkness.

It was in this fug of sleep that Gideon thought she dreamed the impossible: the shift of a skinny body over her own, a soft press of lips to the bridge of her nose, and Harrowhark saying, gentle and wretched, "Oh, Griddle. 

“Of course I couldn't allow you to leave me." 

* * *

When she awoke to another cold, dark morning in her cell, she was alone.

**Author's Note:**

> merry crisis


End file.
